Gov. Rauner calls special session to force budget deal

CHICAGO — Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner has summoned lawmakers back to the Capitol for the final 10 days of June to work on breaking the historic, two-year budget impasse.

The governor took to social media Thursday to announce he'll call a special legislative session, a move that compels lawmakers to show up at the Capitol, but also allows them to collect a per diem of $111 per day plus 39 cents per mile.

The Democrat-controlled General Assembly left Springfield on May 31 without agreeing on a spending plan to send to Rauner for the budget year that begins July 1.

"Everyone needs to get serious and get to work," said Rauner, who has not been out in public this week but released a Facebook video touting his decision. "To ease the minds of parents with school-age children, to reassure people in need, to help our colleges and universities, to grow jobs and bring relief to hardworking taxpayers."

Democratic House Speaker Michael Madigan issued a statement saying his members have worked to compromise with Rauner "without hurting middle-class families...but he has refused to do so."

"House Democrats will continue our work on the budget from Springfield, but as Gov. Rauner has met each of our attempts to date with refusal, it's clear that the onus is on the governor to show that he is finally serious about working in good faith to end the crisis he has manufactured," Madigan said in a statement.

Madigan and Democratic Senate President John Cullerton had left the door open to return to the Capitol at some point in June but hadn't said as of Thursday when they planned to do so. Lawmakers wouldn't be entitled to per diem money if they were called back by their leaders.

Rauner had been suggesting for the past week that he might call a special session, though he dismissed the idea as a waste of time last year.

Now with the clock ticking toward the start of a third year without a budget, Democrats have pushed the idea that the problem in Springfield is Republican resistance to compromise, something Rauner's legislative allies tried to dispel Wednesday with the unveiling of a wide-reaching legislative proposal.

Described by House and Senate Republicans as "The Capitol Compromise," the lawmakers said approval of a seven-part legislative package is what it would take to break the stalemate.

The deal would tweak a budget plan that Senate Democrats approved in May, with Republicans pledging to vote in favor of about $5.4 billion in tax hikes to fill the state's budget deficit on the condition that Democrats help them to pass six other measures on the governor's wish list.

Among them is a four-year property tax freeze, changes to regulations on insurance for workers who are injured on the job, legislation to allow for consolidation of local governments, a rewrite of the way tax dollars are doled out to schools, term limits on politicians and cost-saving changes to the state pension systems.

"Republicans in the General Assembly have laid out a compromise budget plan that I can sign," Rauner said in a Facebook video announcing the special session. "It provides a true path to property tax reduction and it reforms the way our state operates to reduce wasteful spending. It will fund our schools and human services, while spurring economic growth and job creation. It is a true compromise -- and one I hope the majority in the General Assembly will accept."

In 2015, Democratic leaders kept their chambers in continuous session throughout the year, and lawmakers returned to Springfield periodically to pass stopgap measures that kept some money flowing for state services. In 2016, Democratic leaders added sessions to the legislative calendar in June, which is when they put together a stopgap budget to get state government through the end of the year.

The situation has worsened considerably since then. Illinois now owes a record $15 billion in unpaid bills and Wall Street ratings agencies have threatened to downgrade the state's credit rating to junk status if a budget isn't in place by July 1. Meanwhile, the state is at risk of violating multiple state and federal court orders that compel it to write checks with money it doesn't have. And the lottery agency that runs the multistate Powerball and Mega Millions games is threatening to drop Illinois if there's no budget by the end of the month.

Democrats already have approved bills to change the school funding formula, update rules on worker injury insurance and allow for consolidation of local governments, but Rauner is dissatisfied with them.

For Rauner, the special session call is a change from April 2016. Back then, he said that while he wanted to avoid calling a special summer session to deal with the budget impasse, he also was looking into whether he could pay the daily costs of the legislature out of his own pocket. Rauner is a former private equity specialist from Winnetka.

By June 2016, Rauner declared that calling lawmakers back to Springfield would be a "waste of time." Special sessions, Rauner declared, have "a tendency to alienate people, make them frustrated and angry, and has not had success when it's been done in the past."

Indeed, productivity under special sessions called by a governor have not met with much success in recent years. Former Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn called lawmakers back to work several times to deal with the state's growing public employee pension debt, but legislators couldn't come up with any solution during special session days.

The last successful special session occurred in January 2015 when Quinn, shortly before leaving office, ordered lawmakers to return to set a 2016 election date for state comptroller following the death of Judy Baar Topinka.

Quinn's predecessor, imprisoned former Gov. Rod Blagojevich, regularly called lawmakers back into special session and was just as regularly rebuffed as the Democratic-controlled General Assembly feuded with the state's chief executive despite its one-party rule.

In July 2008, Blagojevich called a special session to deal with an unbalanced budget sent to him by lawmakers. Blagojevich contended it was done on purpose by Speaker Madigan to force the governor to take the blame for making politically difficult cuts.

Madigan spokesman Steve Brown responded to Blagojevich's move by suggesting that reporters look up the definition of "sociopath."

That prompted one of the all-time classic replies from Blagojevich's office.

"He's not a sociopath," spokeswoman Katie Ridgway said of her boss.

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